llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Fri Oct 06, 2023 11:59 pm Mics or techniques to help avoid sounding like I’ve got a shitty piezo pickup in my sinuses. Working on the singing technique but it’s bad on the nnnn sounds

Oh man, I've been there. Are you recording?

I've found when trouble shooting my shortcomings I have a session where I have to experiment and try and coach myself out of problems. If it's going anywhere I usually come back to a recording of myself no longer doing the annoying thing but singing kind of weird or with no energy. Then I have to start over and mostly forget the fix.

In general where the high mids sit on any given mic could enhance or deemphasize the sinusy parts of your voice. More important is opening up, aim above the mic or suspend the mic slightly higher than usual. Even more important is vowel formation. Listening to theatre kids training I've learned that it's often a game of opening vowels as wide as possible and gently tapping consonants to get the word through. Weird shit can work. I always remember the other singer in my band recording the lyrics "Push me..." and the 'uh' was a weird flat thing even when it was ballpark on key. He figured out the trick was to sing something closer to 'pesh me'. It sounded like the right word but was in an easier spot for his throat.

I've heard singers try a part while plugging their noses just to find all the spots in a line that should be indifferent to their sinuses. You realize for example a long 'A' vowel is half nose but if you move it closer to 'ah' it opens up.

losthighway wrote: Sun Oct 08, 2023 12:03 am

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Fri Oct 06, 2023 11:59 pm Mics or techniques to help avoid sounding like I’ve got a shitty piezo pickup in my sinuses. Working on the singing technique but it’s bad on the nnnn sounds

Oh man, I've been there. Are you recording?

I've found when trouble shooting my shortcomings I have a session where I have to experiment and try and coach myself out of problems. If it's going anywhere I usually come back to a recording of myself no longer doing the annoying thing but singing kind of weird or with no energy. Then I have to start over and mostly forget the fix.

In general where the high mids sit on any given mic could enhance or deemphasize the sinusy parts of your voice. More important is opening up, aim above the mic or suspend the mic slightly higher than usual. Even more important is vowel formation. Listening to theatre kids training I've learned that it's often a game of opening vowels as wide as possible and gently tapping consonants to get the word through. Weird shit can work. I always remember the other singer in my band recording the lyrics "Push me..." and the 'uh' was a weird flat thing even when it was ballpark on key. He figured out the trick was to sing something closer to 'pesh me'. It sounded like the right word but was in an easier spot for his throat.

I've heard singers try a part while plugging their noses just to find all the spots in a line that should be indifferent to their sinuses. You realize for example a long 'A' vowel is half nose but if you move it closer to 'ah' it opens up.

Thanks, yes, recording! In this specific instance I was trying to balance recording voice and acoustic at the same time, which had me trying different techniques and added to the confusion.

The process you describe is exactly what happened but I did it way dumber - it sounded perfectly fine (and cool) at the beginning sketching things out in front of a single mic in omni, then I came back and got a more complex micing scheme setup and worked myself in circles changing keys and locations in the room, mic positions, everything. So yesterday I came back, deleted a couple weeks worth of takes (in part time recordist time) and basically got what I needed in an hour. The recording isn’t finished, but I can probably just pick a key out of the two I landed on, do some light editing out of a few takes and move on with my life.

I want to say it was kind of exacerbated by the AEA KU5A I was using for vocals for a while, but I don’t think that’s fair as I’m not a natural singer and was sitting down, both of which are points against me and not the mic! I just really shouldn’t be singing any mic you have to get up very close on. I was also trying to boost middle frequencies to find trouble spots to cut, and I caught a couple but EQ only served as a sweetener once I was able to figure out what I was doing.

Good idea with phonetic sounds - didn’t even occur to me. lots to work on.

Does anyone else find gear shootouts on youtube pretty useless? They’re just commercials, right?

How can you even rate a microphone vs another when you’re not hearing the source in person?

mrcancelled wrote: Sat Oct 07, 2023 11:42 pm Let's say a total dipshit with not much experience working with guitars/hardware wanted to swap the pickguard of a Peavey T-60, would that be easy to do?

totally. you've got it. You've probably already done it.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Does anyone else find gear shootouts on youtube pretty useless? They’re just commercials, right?

How can you even rate a microphone vs another when you’re not hearing the source in person?

Yep - yet, the AI of the future-present will present all information scrubbed from them as absolute fact.

Will a dynamic mic function with 48V phantom power applied? Its not necessary, obv, just testing some things.

Yes, it will work.

There were plenty of consoles back in the day that didn't have switchable P48 and mics worked with them just fine.

The only thing to be careful of is older ribbon mics that don't have some means of protecting themselves from phantom designed in.

^ And even then it's only a concern if you have a broken cable or an intermittent connection. A balanced, fully connected 48v does nothing to the ribbon element, but if the circuit is incomplete it'll wiggle the ribbon hard and cause stretching/breakage.

Stupid question but here goes. I need some inline mic attenuation (xlr). Buying a two-pack of xlr gender changer adaptors ($4.50 ea) and sending the mic signals backwards through my passive DI box that has attenuation in it is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying inline pads.
Will that work properly?

Bubber wrote: Mon Oct 30, 2023 4:52 pm Stupid question but here goes. I need some inline mic attenuation (xlr). Buying a two-pack of xlr gender changer adaptors ($4.50 ea) and sending the mic signals backwards through my passive DI box that has attenuation in it is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying inline pads.
Will that work properly?

You don't know what it will be like until you try but the main job of a DI is changing impedance from low (instrument) to high (mic). Working backwards you'll be sending something high impedance into something anticipating an instrument. This won't start a fire but it will cause some tonal changes.